Eternity bores me, I never wanted it.

God has to remind us this isn't heaven by a long shot, so he increases the radios and lethal flies.

I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.

But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that someday―at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere―the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?

The blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.

I lay and cried, and began to feel again, to admit I was human, vulnerable, sensitive. I began to remember how it had been before; how there was that germ of positive creativeness. Character is fate; and damn, I'd better work on my character. I had been withdrawing into a retreat of numbness: it is so much safer to NOT feel, NOT to let the world touch one.

I woke to the sound of rain.